Judith Gobets was a daughter of Jacob Gobets and Betje Barend and was born on 13 May 1894 in Amsterdam. There she married Jacob van West on 19 May 1920, a son of David van West and Keetje Cohen. Her husband then came living in with Judith a month later, who by the way still lived at home with her parents at Valkenburgerstraat 130. They moved to Retiefstraat 88 in 1921 and Judith, her husband and baby Betsie moved with them, because Betsie was born in the Valkenburgerstraat before the removal.
Judith came from a family with ten children, four of whom died before the war. Her other brothers and sisters, viz. Rebecca, Abraham, Sophia, Catharina and David died during the Holocaust. Her husband Jacob also came from a large family; Jacob had 12 brothers and sisters, of whom Willem, Hijman, Sara, Marcus, Emanuel and Naatje van West were murdered during the Shoah. The others all died before the war.
The Van West couple had three children; their son David was only 2 days old when he died on 16 August 1928 and was buried the next day at the Zeeburg Jewish Cemetery. Both other children, Betsie, born on 20 March 1921, born in Valkenburgerstraat, and Keetje, born in Retiefstraat, on 1 May 1931, perished during the Holocaust.
Notes on the registration cards of Jacob, Judith, Betsie and Keetje van West show that after receiving a call for the so-called Arbeitseinsatz, the Jewish Council was contacted regarding a postponement of deportation. That postponement was indeed granted by the Council, because the actual deportations took place much later.
Jacob van West was arrested at some point and taken to Vught concentration camp in the night of 9 to 10 March 1943. He stayed there until 21 March 1944 and was deported to Auschwitz 2 days later. Via Mononwitz (Auschwitz III) and Auschwitz I he has been “transported” in a so-called “evacuation transport in January 1945 and ended up on 26 January in Buchenwald, where he died on 9 February 1945.
Daughter Betsie van West left her parental home for Apeldoorn, to get employed in “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch” as an apprentice nurse. The Jewish Council had issued her with an I.D. with no. 1961 on 20 October 1942, but she was not officially “gesperrt” – exempted from deportation.
After the Germans had emptied Het Apeldoorsche Bosch and a large part of the staff and all patients had been deported to Auschwitz on 22 January, Betsie and other staff members were taken from Apeldoorn to Westerbork that 22nd January 1943. Betsie van West was housed in barrack 72 upon arrival there and deported to Auschwitz on 2 February. On 5 February 1943, she was murdered immediately after arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Judith and her youngest daughter Keetje stayed all that time at home in Amsterdam. However, they were arrested during the large scale raid of 20 June 1943, prepared in secret by the Germans and taken to Westerbork. The raid was intended to deport a group of Jewish residents who had not yet been deported so far. 5542 Jews were then arrested and taken by train to Westerbork. (source: Wikipedia). Judith Gobets and her daughter Keetje van West then ended up in barrack 62.
On 13 July 1943 they were both deported to Sobibor with 1986 other deportees, where they were immediately murdered in the gas chambers on arrival on 16 July 1943. There were no survivors from this transport.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Jacob Gobets and David van West (1863), archive cards of Judith Gobets and Keetje van West; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Jacob van West, Judith van West-Gobets, Betsie van West and Keetje van West; information by Raymund Schütz re. the first postponements of deportation and the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl/13 July 1943.